


I'll drown before your very eyes

by ToshiChan



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Annie Cresta Dies, Finnick Odair Lives, Forced Prostitution, Gen, Healing, Hopeful Ending, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Platonic Relationships, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, but it does get better, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 11:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21427456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToshiChan/pseuds/ToshiChan
Summary: “If you knew what Finnick’s been through the last few years, you’d know how remarkable it is he’s still with us.”But he’s not. With them, that is. He’s slipping, fading.Drowning.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason & Finnick Odair, Katniss Everdeen & Finnick Odair
Comments: 15
Kudos: 180
Collections: sadfics





	I'll drown before your very eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are back in 2012 and I'm tentatively writing Hunger Games fanfiction. I really wanted to explore a Finnick who didn't have Annie to lean on during recovery, and also a Finnick who doesn't die because I'm about that happy ending.

Nobody drowns in District Four. Not unless it’s on purpose. Babies are taught to swim before they can walk. The ocean is their livelihood, one that could easily become a weakness if not addressed correctly. The Capital allows this strength, because it wouldn’t bode well for them if their merchandise were all up and dying, sinking down beneath the surface to a watery grave. So, it doesn’t matter how scary some find it, doesn’t matter if the salty water causes rashes for others, everyone in District Four is a swimmer.

Nobody drowns in District Four, unless it’s on purpose.

Finnick is drowning now.

* * *

When Finnick first wakes up, he genuinely has no idea where he is or how he got there. They are no memories rattling around in his brain that could explain anything. There’s no ‘the last thing he remembers’ to cling onto. There’s nothing but waking up, eyes still closed, body aching all over. There’s weight pressing down on him, his arms specifically. They feel like restraints and he grounds himself on them. If he’s tied down in such a way, then he must be at a client’s place. Since he hurts so much and can’t remember a thing, he continues on with this train of thought and assumes it must have been a rough session. 

The smell in the air though…it burns his nose. It’s a chemical of some sort and it doesn’t make sense in this little reality he’s concocted for himself. The places he visits (is dragged to, unwilling but there anyway because he has too much to lose, has lost so much and yet he could still lose more) never smell like this. They smell of thick perfume, of riches and wealth. They practically scream money.

Wherever he is now, it whispers sickness and despair into his ear.

_Run, hide, you’re trapped, you’re dying…_

He opens his eyes and it comes rushing back to him like the way the wave of water from the broken damn rushed towards Annie all those years ago, her eyes barely having time to widen in alarm.

Annie!

He’s in District Thirteen and Annie isn’t with him. Hadn’t they been…

No. He’s remembering now. He hadn’t been with her, safe and at peace in District Four. He’d been in the arena, back in the games even after they’d promised he wouldn’t have to go back, promised he wouldn’t play their games anymore.

(Lies. Always lies. He goes back every year and he never stops playing their games)

He’d been in the arena and he’d been fighting for Peeta, for Katniss, for the rebellion. They’d said they’d come for them, rescue them before they were all gone. Then they’d fly away and never come back and start making a difference, stop letting their children be stolen and killed before their very eyes.

If Finnick is where he thinks he is, then their promises have been followed through on. He is safe. He’s been rescued before they were all gone.

They came for him.

(But not for Annie)

That’s his last thought before he slips under.

* * *

He doesn’t remember the next three times he wakes up. There was a lot of crying, perhaps. And he thinks maybe he tried to slam his head against the wall.

Had he been trying to kill himself? Or maybe he’d just had an itch he couldn’t scratch.

The funny thing is, he really doesn’t remember.

The funny thing is, it probably doesn’t even matter anymore.

He’s still here.

Still waking up.

* * *

The fifth time he wakes up, Katniss is there. She’s perched in an uncomfortable looking chair, knees pulled up to her chin so her dark eyes peer out over the top of them.

“Hi.” She says. “They didn’t get him out.”

“Who?” Finnick says, and then he feels stupid because there’s only one person she could be talking about.

“Peeta.” She answers anyway.

“I’m sorry.” He says. “I understand.”

“I know.” Katniss said, surprisingly. He remembers she hadn’t trusted him back in the arena. “They didn’t get Annie either.”

Even just hearing her name brings tears to Finnick’s eyes. Katniss blinks in surprise at him as he starts to sob.

“Sorry.” He says through the tears. “I don’t, I can’t…sorry.”

Katniss sits there and watches as he cries himself dry and then some. By the time he’s finished, he can’t even remember why he started.

* * *

He can’t stay in hospital forever. They give him a room (and it turns he has a lot of breakdowns and kind of needs to go back to the hospital a lot, so it’s not like he spends much time in his room but it’s a nice gesture) but he’s the only one in it and it’s lonely in there. The walls press in and the roof bears down on him and when it’s night-time, all he can imagine is the tons and tons of rock between him and fresh air. District Four was never like this. Kids were lulled to sleep with the sharp tang of salt in the air and the soothing sound of waves gently lapping at their jetties.

In District Four, you swam before you could walk.

In District Thirteen, it feels like you’re just being brought up to die.

* * *

People talk to him a lot, when he’s awake. Finnick doesn’t think he’s awake a lot these days. He doesn’t remember it, so chances are he sleeps most of the time. Apparently this means that when he’s awake, he’s highly sought after. People keep talking at him (not to him, since usually he’s not listening) but their words don’t make sense.

They want him to fight for the rebellion. They want to make movies where he’s the star and he stands half-naked on a rock with a trident in one hand and a cocky smile on his face. They want brave Finnick, handsome Finnick, sexy Finnick.

Finnick isn’t any of those things anymore.

He’s broken.

Nobody drowns in District Four.

The thing is, Finnick isn’t in District Four. He’s in District Thirteen and it’s perfectly fine if he drowns there.

* * *

He gets his hands on some rope.

The rope promptly gets taken away from him because they’re worried he might make a noose and hang himself, but they eventually give it back after they cut a few metres of it off.

So yeah. He gets his hands on some rope.

It’s easier to stay awake when there’s something to do. The more time that passes since the electric shock he got in the arena, the more his brain pieces itself back together. There are more things to think about now, and if he can keep his hands busy, then he can stop sleeping so much.

The rope becomes a security blanket in a way that nothing has ever been before. He works his fingers around it mindlessly, letting himself sink into the past where he and Annie were happy together. His hands twist and knot and tie and wind and all the while he can be back on District Four on a boat with Annie at his side and the ocean spread out in front of them.

Someone tried to take his new rope away once, and he scratched himself raw. He spent five days in hospital.

Nobody takes the rope now.

Good. It’s easier to stay awake when there’s something to do.

* * *

“Why did you join the rebellion?” Katniss asks. Finnick’s back in hospital and she’s tracked him down, sitting in that uncomfortable chair again and watching as he loops the rope through his hands.

“Um…” Finnick squints at her. “What?”

She raises an eyebrow and waits. “I know you heard me the first time.”

That’s right. He had. Finnick thinks for a moment and then brightens. “Right…um…why did I join the rebellion.”

Repeating the questions helps. If he doesn’t, he might just forget it all over again.

“Well…”

And answer springs to his mind.

“It had to be better than what was happening to me there.”

“Oh?” Katniss looks surprised. He can’t blame her. He knows exactly what she thinks of him. Sexy, slutty Finnick. “And what was happening to you there?”

Her voice is dangerous. She thinks he doesn’t have the right to complain. She thinks that yeah, he’d fought in the games and came from a district, but he got to have fun and party and eat well and go out and enjoy himself. Katniss thinks that his life has nothing compared to her slow starvation in District Twelve.

“I was sold into sex. Every night someone from the capital raped me. I couldn’t say no or they’d kill my family.” He says those words just to watch her face crumple.

It’s mean. It’s vindictive. He should be better than that.

He’s not.

“Would that have…” The gears turn into Katniss’s head. She’s not saying sorry for jumping to conclusions. Finnick doesn’t expect her to.

“It’s a good thing you started the rebellion.” Finnick offers.

“Ten years.” She breathes, and it’s more for her sake than his so he stays quiet. “I have to…”

She jumps up and leaves. Finnick goes back to his rope.

He’s already forgotten what they were talking about.

* * *

They’re trying to get him in their movies again. Finnick sits in their meetings and does his best to try and listen but it’s not really working. He can’t hear their words let alone remember them, but he recognises the looks in their eyes and he knows they are tired of him.

That’s okay. He’s tired of himself as well.

“Just one.” Flavia begs. He thinks her name is Flavia…though it could be Fulvia. “The people deserve to know you’re alive and fighting.”

Finnick twists the rope in his hands and his mouth twists itself into an uncertain line. “I don’t think I’d be very good at it.

Flavia/Fulvia throws her hands up in despair. “You’re Finnick Odair. You’re a natural on camera.”

“I am?” Finnick frowns. She sounds certain but he’s not so sure. He hates the idea of eyes on him, watching his every move and waiting to make him their own. “I don’t remember.”

“No.” Flavia/Fulvia sighs. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

She leaves.

He goes back to his rope.

* * *

Sometimes he’s lucid. It’s a nice word, lucid. Soft on his tongue, demanding only one strong sound. He likes how it makes him sound calm and in control. Lucid. He’s lucid.

He’s lucid sometimes.

Those might just be the worst time.

When Finnick Odair is lucid, he remembers everything. He remembers the sound his trident made when it met with the flesh of his opponents. He remembers being fourteen and young, way too young but he was in the bed of a stranger anyway and they were all over him in ways he’d never even begun to think about. He remembers Annie and her wild eyes and wild hair and the way she’d looked at him when he thought he didn’t notice. He remembers the way she’d crept up onto him until suddenly it had felt weirder when she wasn’t there. He remembers Mags kissing him and then running for the fog and the boom of the cannon in his ears reminding him of someone else he couldn’t save.

He remembers everything, and it’s too much.

The good thing is that he’s never lucid for long and when the fog washes back over him, smoky and painful like it had been in the arena (Mags, oh Mags) he forgets all over again.

* * *

Finnick’s in the food hall one day, clutching his tray of food and wondering where he should sit when he hears Katniss talking to her friend (cousin? Finnick was pretty sure he’d seen the boy on TV once and he’d been called her cousin) at their table.

“Are you mad at him?” He asks. Finnick is late to this conversation (honestly, he’s not even really a part of it) so he has no idea who this ‘him’ is.

“It’s hard to be mad at someone who cries all the time.” She’s saying, picking at her lunch. She’s laughing at the same time though, and her friends is cracking a smile as well. “Fighting suddenly gets really hard when the only reaction you get is tears. Plus, he wouldn’t even remember having the fight in the first place.”

Finnick stops right there and with startling clarity, he realises that they’re talking about him.

Someone bumps into him but they move on quickly. Everyone is used to bumping into Finnick Odair. Sometimes he just forgets how to walk.

Now is not one of those times.

Finnick is having a lucid moment and it’s one of the worst ones yet.

He’s lucid, aware of himself and awake and remembering every bad thing that happened to him at startling speed while just a few feet away, Katniss talks to her handsome friend (not a cousin, he remembers now) about how pathetic Finnick has become.

He wants to drop his plate and run but wasting food is a big no-no here. Nothing would come out of it probably, considering he’s considered mentally insane, with a bracelet to prove it, but he’s lucid enough to know it’s the wrong thing to do. The wrong thing to do, but a thing he wants to do nonetheless.

Nobody drowns in District Four. Not there, where they’re as much children of the sea as they are of their own parents. Nobody drowns there, but you can take a child of District Four and put them somewhere else and they’ll probably drown there.

Finnick is drowning right now.

Yes, he cries a lot. Yes, he basically lives in the hospital. Yes, he can’t remember his own name sometimes, and he forgets to put pants on a lot (not now though, he’s wearing them now) and he’s not contributing anything to the discussion, but he thought Katniss understood. It’s the trauma, plain and simple. He’s shaken to his very core and he’s broken in all the wrong places and the right ones as well but he’d never had to feel embarrassed and ashamed. He’d had Katniss and Beetee and they were all fucked up too and they understood him.

But now Katniss is laughing at him behind his back and he’s aware enough to feel hurt and ashamed.

She’s right to do it, honestly. He is pathetic.

It’s at that moment she looks up and her face falls. She knows he’s heard every word she said, and she knows he understood that it was about him. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t look so ashamed.

“Finnick.” She stands. His hands clench around his tray. It’s not right. It should be the rope in his hands. He needs the rope.

“No.” He says as she approaches. “No, leave me alone.”

“Finnick, I didn’t mean anything by it.” She sounds a little bit angry. “Don’t get upset. Come sit with us. How are you feeling?”

“I’m lucid.” He tells her plainly. “I feel like shit. And it’s worse now, since I know how you feel.”

“I…”

“Don’t.” He says, and finally, finally drops the tray. It clatters at his feet and the noise draws all attention to them. District Thirteen natives are glaring, while the refugees just watch with brazen curiosity at the two most famous victors. “Don’t come near me. Not for a while. I need time.”

Down here in Thirteen, it feels like he has all the time in the world and yet none of it all at the same time.

“I’m sorry.” Katniss says. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. We’re allowed to talk about you Finnick, for crying out loud.”

If she wants a fight, she’s not going to get it. He spins on his heels and leaves, leaves it all behind. The food, the spectators, Katniss and her friend.

He goes to the hospital and climbs into his bed and curls up into a ball.

Beneath him, the floor turns to ocean and he is swept away.

* * *

Katniss comes to visit him the next day and he’s not sure why, but he screams at her to go away.

* * *

Annie…

Wild eyes and wild hair. Hands pressed against her ears because the world is too loud. He mirrors her sometimes and understands why it works.

Nobody drowns in District Four. You can take someone out of District Four though, and they might drown somewhere else.

In the arena, Annie stayed afloat, drifting across the top of the water with her hair drifting around her head.

Wild eyes and wild hair.

She was never going to be the next Finnick Odair. Not in size or stature or legacy.

Finnick let the Capital sink its fingers into him even tighter just to keep Annie safe.

_“You didn’t have to.” Annie tells him, sad._

_“I did.” He says._

_“I would’ve…” She pauses. “I would’ve done it. To keep you safe.”_

_“I’m breaking.” Finnick tells her, honest and afraid. “Maybe soon I’ll be broken altogether. I didn’t want that for you. I’m selfish.”_

_“No.” She says, and kisses him. “I am. For thinking it’s bad to be looked away. Thank you, Finnick.”_

Annie.

Wild eyes and wild hair and they took her out of District Four but she didn’t drown.

He’s drowning right now.

She was always stronger than Finnick.

* * *

Maybe, in a different world, Finnick would be better by now.

In this world, he’s not.

* * *

“I’m sorry.” Katniss says.

“Why?”

“For talking about you behind your back.”

“You did that?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry. I was trying to make myself feel better by putting you below me.”

“You’re being very thoughtful.”

“I can be thoughtful.”

“Can, but aren’t.”

“Shut up and let me apologise.”

“I don’t even remember what you did.” Finnick says to her earnestly.

“That doesn’t matter.” Katniss tells him firmly. “It was still wrong. So shut up and let me do it.”

He does.

* * *

He finally agrees to sit down and film a stupid video for them to show the rebellion. He’s not stupid enough to think anybody cares about him. He isn’t the kind of victor you can rally behind like Katniss is. He didn’t outsmart the games. He played them and he won them and then he kept on playing. He was a capital puppet and he let himself be used until the very stink of it all had rubbed deep into his skin and wouldn’t come out.

Revolutions don’t favour people like him. He let himself be controlled. He never stood up for himself. Who cares if he’d been working behind the scenes to try and find a way to bring everything tumbling down around the Capital? Nobody ever saw that. They just saw him becoming everything they hated.

Even with this hatred and loathing for himself running through his mind anytime he’s awake and aware enough, he still agrees.

At the end of the day, Finnick Odair has always been bad at saying no.

They use Katniss’s style team on him since there’s no one else on hand to make him look good.

_“Why does Finnick Odair need a stylist? He’s good looking enough on his own.”_

Caesar Flickerman’s words ring in his ears as Octavia brushes his hair but he lets them fade away instead of springing to the forefront of his mind. They’re not going over the top, he tells himself. It’s just so he won’t look washed out on camera.

They set him up outside near a body of water and even though Finnick’s entire body aches to be in it, they won’t let him swim.

In District Four, you learnt to swim before your feet had even touched the ground.

In District Thirteen, they expect him to walk first.

He smiles for the camera and repeats the words they feed him but the entire time the only thing he can think about is the water behind him and how good it would be to float weightless in it.

* * *

They show him the movie later and he looks weak and small but apparently just as handsome as ever.

He doesn’t ever remember what they made him say.

* * *

Beetee is a familiar sight in District Thirteen, whipping his way through the rabbit’s burrow of tunnels in his wheelchair. Apart from Haymitch who Finnick rarely sees, Beetee his Finnick’s only friend from before the revolution started. It doesn’t matter that there’s a huge age gap between them. It never did, for the victors. At the end of the day, there was only ever going to be a select few people who truly understood what you’d been through so why did it matter if some of them happened to be ten or twenty or thirty years your senior.

Beetee always starts every conversation with Finnick the same way.

“How are you doing?”

Finnick isn’t as consistent with his answers.

Sometimes Beetee has to ask him two or three times because Finnick can’t get his brain to tune in, and when he finally does, the answer is mumbled nonsense. Other times, he’s lucid enough to respond but also lucid enough to remember so his reply is usually something along the lines of ‘feeling shit’ which Beetee is kind enough to laugh at. On rare occasions, Finnick is in touch with reality and has been for a while, long enough to sort some things out, so the answer might actually be a positive one.

That’s rare though, and it never lasts long.

Conversation will differ after the predictable opening. Finnick knows (when he’s lucid enough to know) that he is a horrible conversationalist these days. It takes him a long time to understand what is being said to him. He forgets what he’s saying himself halfway through a sentence. Sometimes he’ll just up and leave whenever it strikes his fancy.

Beetee is endlessly patient, though. His legs may not work but his mind is as sharp as ever. Even during Finnick’s worst days, Beetee can get through to him.

* * *

“There’s a rescue mission.” Katniss tells him. Her eyes are wide with panic and her breath is coming in short and fast. She’s most likely come to Finnick for comfort but all she’s done is dropped the floor out from underneath him.

Annie.

Wild eyes and wild hair.

Annie.

Wild eyes and wild hair and they took her out of District Four but she never drowned.

Annie!

It must be a record how fast they sedate him. He didn’t even get the chance to panic.

* * *

When he wakes up, they shake their heads at him and tell him they’re sorry and then they pin him down and tie his arms to the bed before he can do anything dangerous.

* * *

They got Johanna out. They got Peeta out.

They didn’t get Annie.

* * *

“She’s not dead.” Johanna slips into Finnick’s bed and presses her shaved head to his chest. It’s awkward, because he’s still strapped down, but she makes it work. “She’s not dead Finnick.”

She might as well be.

* * *

He has his rope.

He knots it and unknots it and then knots it again.

His lungs fight for air and he knows he’s drowning.

* * *

Apparently they’ve given his room to someone else. It’s not like he uses it anymore. He’s back in the hospital, full time.

This time, Johanna’s at his side. She snipes and snarks during the day and then curls up in his side at night.

She never cries.

He cries all the time.

What a pair they make.

(He forgets to ask about Peeta)

* * *

Finnick can’t quite remember but he thinks Katniss might have been there with them at some stage.

Then again, maybe that wasn’t right, because she’d been really quiet and that wasn’t like Katniss at all.

He makes a mental note to ask Johanna about it and promptly forgets a second later.

Lucid moments are far apart now. Maybe…maybe he’s not even having them at all.

* * *

One night in the hospital, with Johanna curled in a ball at his side, the sharp stubble of her head scraping against his chest, he asks her.

“What did they do to you?”

She stiffens against him and stays quiet for a long time. Then, finally, she speaks. “Who’s asking?”

“Finnick.” He says.

“Crazy Finnick or normal Finnick?”

He laughs a little. “I don’t think there is such a person as normal Finnick these days.”

“Normal Finnick it is.” She ignores him, just like she used to do before all this, before things went to shit even more than they already had. “Why does normal Finnick want to know what they did to me?”

“So I can understand.”

She laughs then, and sits up to peer down at him through the darkness. It shouldn’t be possible, but he suddenly feels cold. “Finnick, you understand better than anybody what happened to me. I don’t need to tell you anything. You already know.”

It’s his turn to stiffen. His veins turn to ice and he can feel phantom fingers grasping at his hips.

“I…” He gasps for air. Drowning, again. It’s not water though, nor is it air. It’s fingers and hands and they’re pulling him down, wanting too much of him. He hasn’t got enough to give. There isn’t anything left for them to take. “Jo…”

Johanna seems to understand, and she slips away, back to her own bed, pushed as close to his as they can in a place as strict as the District Thirteen hospital. She holds her hand out to his all night, waiting for him to be okay again to take it.

He doesn’t.

* * *

They want Johanna to make propaganda movies as well, but she’s a lot more there than Finnick is and finds a way to say no every single time.

“Nobody wants to see me.” She spits. “Fuck, I don’t want to see me.”

“You’re an inspiration.” Flavia/Fulvia implores.

“I’m a murderer.” Johanna turns away. “And you should hate me for it.” Four words go unspoken.

_I know I do._

Finnick only knows them because he’s thinking the exact same thing about himself.

* * *

He remembers all of a sudden.

“Peeta!”

“Shut up.” Johanna groans from her bed. “It’s so fucking early, Finnick. Can’t you be lucid at lunch time or something.”

Finnick ignores her. “What happened to Peeta?”

He’s probably asked this before, since a person like him tends to repeat himself a lot, but this is the first time he’s truly aware of what had been missing.

“They tortured him into hating us.” Johanna says wearily. She’s tired. She’s not sleeping enough. Finnick sleeps too much and it’s cruel of him to keep her up but he needs to know.

“How?”

“Venom from their mutant wasps. He tried to kill Katniss the first time they saw each other. She was in hospital for weeks.”

(Not a dream then. She really had been in hospital with them)

“Is he doing okay now?” He asks. He needs Peeta to be okay. After everything they did in the arena to keep him alive (Mags, he misses Mags) he needs to know it was worthwhile.

“How should I know?” Johanna grumbles. “I never leave this fucking hospital Finnick, and no one tells us shit. Or maybe they do tell you shit. You just never seem to remember it.”

* * *

One morning, Finnick curls his hand open and discovers someone’s written **she’s not dead **across his palm.

He thinks about it all day but goes to bed clueless, unable to work out what they’d meant.

* * *

Johanna starts to come and go from the hospital. She’s like Finnick before, slowly finding her footing again. He’s happy about that, glad she’s not becoming a shell of a person like Finnick is. Johanna really was the best of them. The Capital never could get her to sit still and stay down. She wasn’t like Finnick.

She never had too much to lose.

* * *

Annie.

“What happened to Annie?” He asks Beetee urgently. “I can’t find her, I think I lost her.”

“Finnick.” Beetee says. “Finnick, they couldn’t get her out.”

“I don’t understand.” He presses the palms of his hands to his ears and blocks it all out like she used to do.

Wild eyes and wild hair.

What a perfect couple they make.

* * *

Katniss takes his hand and writes something on it in clumsy black letters.

Finnick doesn’t even need to look at it to know what it says.

He’d never imagined Katniss would be the one to keep reminding him.

* * *

She comes screaming into the hospital, jolting him awake from yet another seemingly endless bout of sleep. There are red lines up and down her arms like she’s been scratching at herself and when she kicks at his leg, his only reaction is to wait patiently for whatever rant is sure to follow.

“They won’t fucking let me go!” She yells. Further down, a scandalised nurse rushes off to find someone for damage control.

“Go where, Johanna?” Finnick asks, because he’s lucid at the moment but that doesn’t mean he suddenly knows everything.

“The Capital!”

“Why would you want to go there?”

“To fight. To fucking get back at them for every shitty thing they ever did to me and everyone else.” Johanna kicks his bed.

“I thought your training was going well.”

Johanna had been at his side every other night for weeks on end, bragging about showing Katniss up and chattering about her advanced classes.

“I failed their stupid final test.” Johanna snaps. “Which doesn’t prove anything. As if that would ever happen in real combat.”

“What would happen?” Finnick is really struggling to fill in the gaps here.

Surprisingly, Johanna doesn’t reply at first. She just shoots him a startled look and finally sits down at the end of his bed, picking up his rope and twisting it through her fingers.

“I can’t swim.” She says finally.

In District Four, you learn to swim before you could walk.

Nobody drowns in District Four.

Johanna Mason is not from District Four.

Finnick Odair hasn’t been to District Four in a long time.

“I could teach you.” He offers, because it’s the only thing he can do.

“It’s too late. They fly out tomorrow. I failed.”

“I’d still like to teach you.” He persists. “That way, when this is all over we can visit my home together.”

He hadn’t been intending to calm her down. There is no ‘calming down’ Johanna, so it’s a surprise when she sets the rope aside and gives him a small nod.

“I’m glad you’re here, Jo.” He says and takes her hand.

* * *

In a different world, Finnick is better by now and it makes all the difference.

In this world, he’s not and that makes a difference too.

In one world, dead.

In the other, not there.

Not yet.

Not soon.

* * *

He gets himself back on his feet again. Not in a deep, metaphorical way where he’s suddenly back on track, back in the game. He just starts walking again, leaves the hospital when he’s awake instead of lying there and waiting to fall asleep. It’s easier to remember to do this when he’s more lucid. If he’s not, Johanna usually gets him up and drags him around.

The walking is good. It keeps his mind off whatever is happening at the Capital.

Would it help, if he was there with them? Maybe, if he’d tried harder to get better, he could be making a difference as well.

“You’ve done your part.” Johanna tells him. “Fuck it Finnick, you’re done. Take a break. You deserve it.”

I should be better than this, Finnick thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

He forgets it seconds later, anyway. Forgets he forgot it and moves on with his life, tying knots and going for walks and sometimes remembering wild eyes and wild hair but not knowing why.

(Without Katniss here to write on his hand, Finnick has a hard time remembering Annie exists)

* * *

“I think I want to see Peeta today.” Finnick decides. “Where’s his room?”

Johanna sighs loudly and rolls her eyes and complains loudly but she takes him to Peeta’s private quarters (cell) and hovers around while Finnick fights to get permission to meet with the boy he fought to save in the arena.

They tell Finnick that Peeta has made great progress, but that they’ll have to tie him down during their meeting because they won’t know how he’ll react to Finnick. Finnick hates restraints, hates the memories they make resurface in his mind, but he accepts this without a murmur and waits to be let in.

Peeta is gaunt and pale with bags under his eyes. It’s like looking into a mirror of sorts. They’re not the same person but they’re in the same place going through the same hell. Johanna is another part of their mirror, and Katniss would be too, if she wasn’t so far away.

“Peeta.” Finnick stares at him, horrified. “You’re…”

“Finnick.” Peeta’s eyes narrow. “Rebel slut.”

There’s only one thing Finnick can do to that and its press his hands against his ears and block it out.

In front of him, Peeta begins to thrash and scream, yelling those two words over and over again at Finnick. Even with his shield up, Finnick can hear them. They sting him again and again and again like the nest of wasps had stung Peeta barely a year ago.

Johanna bursts in at that moment and drags him out.

Finnick is crying. “Jo, they made him think I’m just a whore to be passed around. He thinks I came here for sex, Jo, he’s thinking these awful things and they’re not true, they’re not!”

“Let’s get you back to bed.” Johanna says awkwardly. She’s horrible at being comforting but Finnic has never minded.

She gets him back to his bed in the hospital and shoves his rope into his hands and sits with him as he knots and unknots and knots and unknots and knots and unknots until he’s pretty much forgotten what happened.

* * *

Two days later, Finnick asks to see Peeta but apparently he’s too late.

Peeta’s gone to the Capital.

* * *

“They’ve surrendered.” Johanna tells him. “We…we did it, Finnick. We won.”

Finnick smiles at her politely. “Won what?”

(It’s an off day)

* * *

They find her deep in the belly of the beast, curled in a cell with her hands pressed over her ears. Her wild eyes are closed and her wild hair has been shaved. Her chest does not rise and fall.

It took a long time for Annie Cresta to drown.

(It takes even longer for Finnick to accept it)

* * *

They take him home to District Four.

* * *

Rather than live in the overwhelmingly large, unbearably empty victor house that Finnick had once called home, they get him set up in a little cottage near the sea front. From there, it’s easy for Finnick to wake from the grips of a nightmare, pull of his sleep clothes and stumble down to the ocean. He falls into the waves and lies there, eyes staring blankly upward as his body floats gently atop the water.

Johanna’s with him, sometimes. And sometimes its Beetee. And sometimes people Finnick doesn’t even know, or at least, doesn’t remember that he knows. He thinks they think he’s going to drown himself, which is silly.

Nobody drowns in District Four.

He has the ocean back again, water to swim in and support him. It’s not suddenly going to make him better but it’s a far cry from the underground labyrinth of District Thirteen. He has freedom here, even more than usual now that they’ve won.

He’s sure there’s still war going down in the capital, fights to work out who’s going to take charge and lead them all into a better future. It should bother Finnick that he isn’t there to have a say in things but honestly, what kind of case could he even make?

_No more wars. No more fighting. No more Annie’s, locked in cells to die without ever seeing home again._

That’s about the gist of it. He’s sure Katniss or someone will say it for him.

* * *

Finnick grew up in District Four with a large support network of friends and family. He was never lonely, never left alone, especially after his games. Where ever he turned, there was a friendly face in Mags or Annie. If he was sad, there were the comforting hands of his parents.

Now, he has the beach to himself. It’s like he’s the only person in the world.

On lucid days, this bothers him.

On the other days, he can’t even remember what it had been like to have a family.

Then Johanna shows up one day with bags and dumps them down in his kitchen.

“Where’s my room?” She asks as if this had been the plan all along. Who knows, maybe it had been.

Finnick is too shocked, too grateful to kick up a fuss and he just leads her to the second bedroom in his small home. Johanna collapses dramatically onto the bed and gives out a large sigh.

“Katniss killed Coin.” She says.

“Huh.” Finnick rolls the words over in his mind. “Good for her.”

Johanna snorts and when Finnick manages to get his eyes to stay tracked on her, she winks.

* * *

“Teach me to swim.” Johanna says one morning at breakfast as she smears butter onto toast while Finnick ignores his cereal in favour of knotting and unknotting his rope.

“Everyone knows how to swim in District Four.” He’s momentarily confused.

“I’m not from District Four, idiot.” Johanna reminds him which clears everything up.

“Okay.” He sets the rope down. “Let’s go!”

It’s a calm day at sea which is good because teaching someone to swim on a rough day is a nightmare. Johanna refuses to go in further than her knees but there’s enough water between her and the ground to enable Finnick to lay down the basics. They splash around for ages, Johanna snarking and snapping more than usual. Finnick doesn’t mind. He knows she’s just trying to pretend she’s not scared.

It’s the best day he’s had in a while, but he can’t help but shake the fact that someone’s missing.

Wild eyes and wild hair.

He glances at Johanna. Her eyes are wild but her hair is still shaved close to the scalp. Not her then.

Besides, she’s right there with him.

This person is missing.

Unconsciously, Finnick curls open his palm as if he expects to see some writing there.

There’s nothing.

* * *

Johanna leaves one day, says she’s coming back but Finnick is coherent enough to realise she’s been gone two weeks.

She’s left him.

He tries not to panic. She said she’d be back, and Johanna is nothing if not loyal to a fault. Finnick tries to reassure himself with all sorts of concocted realities where she is held up by train delays or gets distracted arguing with Beetee. He knots and unknots the rope to the point that it’s fraying, and he’ll probably need another one, but he keeps on knotting and unknotting, knotting and unknotting.

Annie slips into his mind more often, without Johanna to distract her. The fact that she’s gone hurts Finnick deeper than any real wound could ever hope to. He fought for her freedom and in the end, he could do nothing to give it to her. She died in the belly of the beast and Finnick wasn’t even aware enough to know that it had happened.

He writes **she’s dead **on his palm but avoids looking at the words anyway.

He’s not naive enough to think she would’ve saved him. He’s hopeful enough to think that they would have saved each other. 

* * *

Johanna marches back into his life a month after her initial departure and she’s not alone. Katniss Everdeen hovers behind her, face gaunt and empty. Her bones stick out sharply from her skin and her clothes hang shapelessly over her.

Finnick frowns, puzzles this over. “Don’t you two hate each other?”

Johanna snorts but Katniss just stares blankly at him.

“I lost Prim.” She says and waits.

“Oh.” Finnick says, and curls his fingers tightly around the words on his hand. “I’ll take the couch.”

* * *

They make it work, the three of them. It helps that two of them are rarely conscious and coherent. It falls on Johanna to be the responsible one which Finnick laughs about on his lucid days.

“Stop fucking laughing at me and cook something.” Johanna snaps. All her attempts turn out miserable, but they eat them anyway.

Startled, Finnick does.

The shellfish pasta with creamy sauce taste like home. Katniss eats two whole platefuls and when she’s finished, she fixes Finnick with stern eyes.

“From now on, you cook.” She demands.

Finnick can only nod and do what she says.

* * *

Katniss wakes them up with her screams most nights. They fill the small house, terrified and shrill as Katniss struggles to wake from whatever terrifying image has its grip on her. Sometimes Finnick will go to her, sometimes Johanna will. Sometimes neither of them will move, trapped in their own personal hell and unable to break free to help someone else.

A house of three victors is a restless house.

* * *

There a good days and bad days.

Finnick likes the good days best. Why wouldn’t he? On the good days, he’s lucid. He knows about Annie and it upsets him but he’s making peace with it. He swims, actually commanding his body to move how it used to, forgoing simple floating to instead forge his own path through the waves. When he tires, he joins Katniss and Johanna on the beach and absently knots and unknots his rope. The three of them will sit there for ages, eating Finnick’s food and watching the sun sink into the sea. They’ll talk to each other about happy memories, good things.

“I’ll teach you all to climb trees one day.” Johanna promises after a swimming lesson with Finnick. “See how you like being the student then, Finnick.”

“I already know how to climb trees.” Katniss complains. “Didn’t you see me in the arena?”

It should be a taboo subject, mentioning the games like that, but Finnick and Johanna just laugh because they do remember Katniss in that tree, climbing higher and higher while below her the career tributes floundered.

“Just Finnick then.” Johanna concedes, a rare occurrence but Johanna’s learning to pick her battles. “We’ll laugh at him when he inevitably falls flat on his ass.”

It’s enough to startle a laugh out of both Finnick and Katniss.

It’s good.

* * *

Finnick wakes up one night and finds Katniss pressed against his chest. He panics for a brief moment but calms down seconds later. He opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but Katniss beats him to it.

“You were screaming.” She says. “I thought this might help.”

Finnick things for a moment and realises with a start that his throat feels raw and his eyes are wet. Tonight is not Katniss’s night to fight her demons.

It’s his.

* * *

Peeta comes for Katniss eventually and they leave, heading back to District Twelve.

It’s just Finnick and Johanna again.

* * *

“Are you going to leave me?” He asks, crying.

“No.” Johanna says. “Not when it’d wreck me just as much as it would wreck you.”

* * *

Nobody drowns in District Four but sometimes Finnick thinks about giving it his best shot.

* * *

He finds Johanna sitting on the beach one day of her own free will. She never goes out there without him. It’s like she’s afraid the entire ocean will rise and carry her off in the blink of an eye.

She’s out there now though, staring blankly at the waves as they lap at the shore. Finnick approaches her with loud footsteps so she’ll know he’s coming. She doesn’t tell him to go away and so he sits down next to her and together they stare out over the sea. Neither speaks for a long time. The silence is comfortable. Finnick is lucid and Johanna is even more so.

They sit.

She breaks the silence.

“Has it been worth it?”

Finnick doesn’t think she was asking him, so he waits quietly for her to answer herself.

“I know it has been.” She says. “If we hadn’t done this all, the next batch of children would be back in the games. It’s worth it for them.”

“But for you?” Finnick asks.

Johanna turns to look at him. “Sometimes I wished they’d killed me.

Finnick swallows. “Sometimes I wish the same thing.”

“I wish we’d been able to do our part and then just die. Move on and see if there’s anything better. They say we won a war but I say it was the kind of war nobody ever wins.”

Finnick hums non-committedly.

“We lost everything.” Johanna says and her voice cracks.

**She’s dead.**

“I still have you.” Finnick says.

He’s not sure if it’s the right thing to say or the wrong thing.

Johanna abruptly seizes him in a hug so tight that Finnick is momentarily at a loss for what to do.

“Yeah.” She mutters, and it’s almost a grumble. “I still have you too.”

**She’s not dead.**

Not Johanna Mason. No one could ever take Johanna Mason down.

* * *

Nobody in District Four drowns.

Annie didn’t.

Finnick isn’t.

There are other, far worse ways to die.

But at the end of the day, they say it with pride.

Nobody in District Four drowns.

* * *

“I’m going to buy a boat and we’re going to go sailing.” Finnic announces to Johanna.

Her face goes an odd shade of green but never let it be said that Johanna had ever given in to her weaknesses. “Okay. Sounds good.”

Finnick beams. “I thought so too.”

Annie whispers in his ear. _New love?_

_No,_ Finnick whispers back. _Old friend._

* * *

Finnick is in the heart of District Four and its been forever since he willingly went out. Johanna does the shopping, reluctant all the while, and Finnick stays at home and hides away. There’s no point in sending Johanna boat shopping though, so he’s here instead.

Finnick really wants a boat.

People are staring at him but he avoids their eyes. He doesn’t want to go back to his old life, where he had no privacy and everyone was always looking, always touching, why won’t they stop touching him.

There are numerous places to buy boats all over District Four. Finnick isn’t sure how to differentiate them so he goes to all of them, one after another so he can judge each of the different vessels for sale.

It’s as he’s leaving his fifth shop that a young boy trips right in front of him and falls over. His mother is there in an instant, scooping him up and kissing his scraped knee and laughing as he cries a little, relieved that this is the worst that will ever happen to him.

It hits Finnick truly, then and there, that everything he went through (is still going through) was worth it, was always going to be worth it so that the children of the future would never have to live for the games, die in the games, win the games and keep playing. No more games, never again.

Finnick looks up at the sun and smiles.

It was worth it, Annie.

He misses her though, misses her every day. He’s not always going to think its worth it. There will be days that he’ll scream because he doesn’t think it was, because she’s dead and gone and not coming back.

But he knows she loved children, and that she would be glad the fight was over.

No more games.

* * *

The kid with the bruised knee stares at Finnick from his mother’s arms.

“Who’s that?” He asks, probably because Finnick is staring right back.

“That’s Finnick Odair.” The mother whispers. “He saved the world.”

He really didn’t, but its nice to be thought of as a hero rather than a capital slut.

* * *

He buys the boat and he takes it out on the waves. Back when the Capital had control over district four, there was a line they couldn’t cross, a point in the ocean that they couldn’t drift over or there’d be severe punishment.

Nobody drowns in District Four but there used to be plenty of executions.

Now though Finnick is free to sail beyond the horizon and far away.

He always comes back though, to Johanna and their little house on the sand. He lives with his nightmares and he thinks about Annie and he writes letters to Katniss and Peeta and Beetee and sometimes Haymitch. Johanna sticks to her word and teaches him to climb trees and just like she’d predicted, he’s horrible at it and she spends the entire day laughing herself silly and it’s such a nice sound that Finnick isn’t even mad. He cooks her favourite for dinner and then the next night he cooks his. There are always leftovers and Finnick has taken to dropping them into town where there are shelters for people who can’t support themselves, a new rarity now that there is less of a sense of internal war in the districts.

Finnick takes his boat out and Johanna comes with him sometimes, grumbling all the while and turning particular shades of green. She stays at his side though, and he stays at hers.

Katniss and Peeta come to visit. It’s hard for them to travel but harder so for Johanna and Finnick. He can’t leave the ocean. Not again, not ever. Beetee sends them new inventions to try and they do, only after he’s promised they won’t blow him up. Haymitch mails over alcohol which Finnick doesn’t drink but Johanna does.

**She’s dead.**

She is, and Finnick will never stop missing her, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to detach himself fully from life.

His lucid days dominate now, the confused moments far and in between.

“Johanna Mason.” He tells her one night as they sit out on the beach and eat fresh fish with lemon. “It was worth it.”

Johanna glances over and when she smiles, it’s all her.

“Finnick Odair.” She says. “You’re right.”

* * *

Nobody drowns in District Four.

Not now, not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like all I do these days is write stories styled like this but eh. 
> 
> I really hope you liked this, please leave kudos and comments if you did. This very much felt like a shot in the dark and it'd be great to know how I went


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